Tom Shea: Updates on the Saw Doctors, Hal Blaine, Deer Tick and more

Sean Heneghan from Springfield’s Nottingham Street introduced me to the Saw Doctors. This had to be 1990 or 1991.

Sean’s people are from Galway and Mayo in Ireland. A Cathedral High School graduate who received his advanced musical education in the late 1970 and 1980s from Steve Wing and John Dougan at the Springfield’s Belmont Records, he shared on Holyoke Community College’s radio station what he’d learned. He went on to graduate from Northeastern University and Franklin Pierce Law Center, and now is a practicing attorney in Melrose and the married father of two girls. Sean, eight months from his 50th birthday, remains a music maven.

Nearly 20 years ago – May of 1992, to be exact – Sean and I saw the Saw Doctors in their first performance at Northampton’s Iron Horse. When they took the stage, they were led by a roadie waving a giant green-and-red flag and broke into “The Green and Red of Mayo.” The lyrics told of cold ocean waves slapping the shore on a winter’s night, the ache of someone who remembers. Holy stuff. And then the show then only got better.

Like Hank Williams and Bruce Springsteen, the band’s songs come from the humanity and everydayness of their lives: girls, dead-end jobs, homesickness, heartbreak, sports, love, and dreams. They even have one about a college professor who’s now Ireland’s president.

Their take on covers was inventive. That night 20 years ago they played Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Rockin’ All Over the World” like a celebratory promise.

The next time the Docs played Northampton, lead singer Davy Carton offered up “Lodi” like a prayer he was sure wouldn’t be answered. Through the years you could hear guitarist Leo Moran’s runs of Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” through their own “That’s What She Said Last Night.” Sometimes they’d encore with the Ramones “Rockaway Beach,” and it was like taking a ride on the A train.

Late last year, the band released “Downtown,” the 1966 hit by Petula Clark, who guests on both the song and its video. It went to No. 2 on the Irish charts and will be included on a Petula Clark greatest hits package being readied for later this year, when she turns 80.

The Saw Doctors return to Northampton on March 11, when they play the Calvin Theatre. Call (413) 586-5858 for tickets or more information.

Alex Solca photoHal Blaine, a Holyoke native, is seen here at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles tribute to the famed drummer in November 2010. Blaine has recorded with such musicians as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, and the Beach Boys.

Holyoke native Hal Blaine is a major character in Kent Hartman’s new book, “The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret” (Thomas Dunne Books-St. Martin’s Press, $25.99.)

“Hal Blaine,” Janet Maslin writes in The New York Times review of the book about the famous studio band, “who justifiably calls himself ’10 of Your Favorite Drummers’ on his website and played his drums at the bottom of an elevator shaft for Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Boxer,’ claims to have come up with the Wrecking Crew’s name.”

Ken Emerson wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “The Wrecking Crew thought as well as it played. It was Mr. Blaine’s idea, for instance, to slam automobile snow chains against a cement floor in order to heighten the percussive intensity of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters.”

Hal was born Harold Simon Belsky in 1929. His family lived on the third floor of an Appleton Street tenement. His first set of drumsticks was a pair of furniture dowels.

”Phil Woods plays for Paul Simon,” Nov. 3, 1988: Phil Woods, 80, arguably the greatest living jazz alto saxophonist, was the cover boy of February’s Downbeat magazine, which printed a chapter of his autobiography yet to be completed, because as he says, “I’m not finished.” It has a working title, though: “Phil Woods: A Life in E Flat.”

The five-time Grammy Award winner grew up in Springfield and graduated from the former Technical High School. Phil learned to play from the late Harvey LaRose, also from Springfield. He has played with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones to Thelonius Monk, Paul Simon and Billy Joel. He married Charlie Parker’s widow and follows in the footsteps of jzzz masters Art Pepper and Connonball Adderley.

“I’ve never thought life was a lemon to be squeezed dry,” Phil told the magazine. “You’ve got to live it, man.”

”From Taj to Deer Tick, the beat goes on,” Oct. 30, 2011:

Ian O’Neil, West Springfield High Class of 2006, spent a good chunk of his youth joining his parents and siblings for functions at the John Boyle O’Reilly Club in Springfield.

On April 19, he returns with his guitar and highly acclaimed indy band, Deer Tick, for a club fund-raiser.

Just before Christmas, the band played Conan O’Brien’s not-so-late show on TBS. Its last album was selected by Spin magazine as one of 2011’s best.

Ian recently was interviewed about Bob Dylan along with other songwriters by American Songwriter magazine.

“I bought ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ in high school. It just seemed like a good place to start because I was more interested in starting to write my own songs…I plowed through everything he made in about a year because it was so enthralling.”

Ian listed his favorite Dylan albums as “John Wesley Harding” and “Time Out of Mind,” saying “They are both stark in their delivery. And I like When Bob Dylan has an intimidating, almost frightening seriousness.”